In October, the streaming service Netflix will offer new episodes of its hit series Stranger Things. The show’s biggest star is Winona Ryder. Funnily enough, she plays a mother in the series, while a few decades ago, there’s a good chance Ryder would’ve played one of the young characters back in her days as a famed teen actress.

Ryder also gained fame (and infamy) for other things. Notably, police arrested Ryder in 2001 for shoplifting from a Beverly Hills store. Ryder was also carrying the prescription drugs Vicodin, diazepam, and oxycodone with her, although she did not have a prescription for such drugs. She performed community service, paid fines, and attended drug counseling programs for these actions. Since then, it appears as if Ryder has not engaged in similar behavior.

There are conflicting theories as to why Ryder, a person with substantial professional and financial success, would shoplift in the first place. One theory is that shoplifting (also known as kleptomania) is an addiction, much like alcohol abuse or drug addiction.

Although some people might scoff at this theory, when you examine it, it begins to make a lot of sense. For one, financially successful people who depend on good publicity to succeed in their jobs don’t have a lot to gain from stealing items from stores. If anything, such activities could hurt their abilities to find and keep work and keep audiences coming to see their projects.

Doing something as risky and potentially career-damaging as shoplifting doesn’t make rational sense. There must be something in the mind, something powerful that compels people to do such things.

It turns out that there is. Or, there might be. Researchers have discovered that compulsive behaviors such as gambling activate the serious areas of the brain as drug and alcohol abuse. This brain activity shows that something actually physically happens when people use alcohol and drugs. It stands to reason, then, that addicted people aren’t weak or amoral but are instead want to recapture these physical feelings.

It’s possible, then, that compulsive shoplifting might trigger these same physical feelings. Perhaps shoplifting is like gambling and other behaviors that people perform for the physical sensations they provide. We’re not 100 percent sure if this is the case, or if Winona Ryder was a compulsive shoplifter herself. We’re just saying that perhaps behaviors and people are more complex than they appear at first glance.